NYC nanny accused of killing 2 kids, stabbing 2 adults

Oct. 25, 2012
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Emergency crews take one stabbing victim from an apartment building on West 75th Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Police say a nanny stabbed to death two young boys and wounded two adults before stabbing her self. / NBC 4 New York

by Michael Winter, USA TODAY

by Michael Winter, USA TODAY

A New York City nanny has been arrested after a mother returned home Thursday evening to find two of her children stabbed to death in the bathtub and two adults wounded.

The nanny also stabbed herself in the neck and may not live.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne told WCBS-AM that the mother, identified by the New York Post as a pediatrician, came home about 5:30 p.m. ET with her 3-year-old daughter to find her 6-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son stabbed multiple times in the tub. The nanny was found on the bathroom floor with apparently self-inflicted stab wounds to her neck and holding a kitchen knife.

Neighbors reported hearing the mother's hysterical screams as she called 911. She reportedly was taken to the hospital in shock.

Earlier news reports indicated the dead children were both boys, ages 3 and 5 or 2 and 6, and the Post erroneously reported the nanny had slit her wrists.

The two other adults are reported in critical condition at St. Luke's Hospital, where the children were pronounced dead.

The nanny was taken to Weill Cornell Medical College and is in critical condition, Browne said. The New York Times reported earlier that a woman believed to be the nanny was in "extremely critical" condition at the hospital. The Times later cited law enforcement officials as saying she was in serious condition and not expected to live.

None of the victims or the nanny had been identified. No motive has been offered.

The attacks happened on the Upper West Side in a luxury apartment building called La Rochelle, on 75th Street near Columbus Avenue.

A neighbor described to the Times the screams she heard from the second-floor apartment.

"There were bloodcurdling screams from a woman and man's screaming," said Rima Starr, who recognized the man's voice as the building superintendent. She heard him yelling, " 'You slit her throat! You slit her throat!' The mother's was just bloodcurdling screams."